PURPOSE: Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and prostate cancer (PC) are the most common urologic diseases among men over fifty and, until recently, they were considered to be caused by the impaired immune response. Despite many studies designed to investigate T-cell-based antitumor immunity, the role of innate immune cells in BPH ...

Increasing evidence supports the role of vitamin D (vitD) in modifying the risk to develop type 1 diabetes (T1D) and other autoimmune diseases. VitD3 might stimulate regulatory T cells (Tregs), a central player in the maintenance of self-tolerance. In addition, direct effects of vitD on β-cell function are postulated. The ...

Particle exposure is known to have negative health effects. In Stockholm the environment in the subway has been reported to have higher particle exposure levels, measured as PM(2.5) and PM(10), than roads with intense traffic in the inner city area. We have recently shown that healthy volunteers exposed to subway ...

BACKGROUND: Targeting of Notch signaling with γ-secretase inhibitors (GSIs) has been considered a promising strategy for the treatment of hematological malignancies including multiple myeloma (MM). Here we investigated whether the cytotoxic effect of bortezomib, an agent commonly used in MM, could be enhanced by the addition of a GSI. METHODS: ...

Diagnosis of MDS has changed during the last years because of the 2008 WHO classification. Complete blood cell count (CBC) is a very important tool both for diagnosis of MDS. The aim of this study was to evaluate if it is possible to use the abnormal signals produced by dysplastic ...

Variability in CD4 T-cell counts has been described for both healthy and HIV-infected persons. It may influence decisions with respect to initiation and monitoring of antiretroviral treatment. to measure the effect of timing of blood sampling for blood cell count measurement. The study population consisted of 71 Ethiopian patients in ...

RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between immune state and cerebral signal intensity abnormalities (SIAs) on T2-weighted magnetic resonance images in subjects with human immunodeficiency virus type 1 infection and highly active antiretroviral therapy. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Thirty-two subjects underwent a total of ...

An understanding of cardiac progenitor cell biology would facilitate their therapeutic potential for cardiomyocyte restoration and functional heart repair. Our previous studies identified cardiac mesoangioblasts as pre-committed progenitor cells from the postnatal heart, which can be expanded in vitro and efficiently differentiated in vitro and in vivo to contribute new ...

Microscopic colitis is a relatively common cause of chronic diarrhoea in predominantly older adults, traditionally termed lymphocytic colitis and collagenous colitis. Increased mast cells found in the colonic biopsies of some patients with chronic diarrhoea may represent a distinct type of microscopic colitis. To provide an updated review of the ...

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in developed countries and is one of the leading causes of disease burden in developing countries. Therapies have markedly increased survival in several categories of patients, nonetheless mortality still remains high. For this reason high hopes are associated with recent developments in ...

The development of an immune response to self antigens drives naive T cells to differentiate into subsets of CD8(+) and CD4(+) effector cells including T(H)1, T(H)2, cells and the more recently described T(H)17, and regulatory T cells (T(reg)). Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease that engages an uncontrolled influx of ...

What is the role and to what degree do Islet-1 cardiac progenitors contribute to cardiogenesis?

Although it has been observed that aggregate size affects cardiac development, an incomplete understanding of the cellular mechanisms underlying human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyogenesis has limited the development of robust defined-condition cardiac cell generation protocols. Our objective was thus to elucidate cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the endogenous control of ...

OBJECTIVE.: Bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can prevent various autoimmune diseases. We examined the therapeutic potential of TGFβ-transduced MSCs (TGFβ-MSCs) in experimental autoimmune arthritis, using an accepted animal model of collagen-induced arthritis (CIA). METHODS.: DBA/1J mice with CIA were treated with syngeneic TGFβ-MSCs, whereas control mice received either vehicle ...

The major problem in stem cell therapy includes viability and engraftment efficacy of stem cells after transplantation. Indeed, the vast majority of host-transfused cells do not survive beyond 24 to 72 hours. In order to increase the survival and engraftment of implanted cardiac stem cells in the host, we developed ...

This study describes the isolation and characterisation of adult canine cardiac stem cells, and explores their ability to differentiate into cardiac myocytes. Direct comparisons are also made with available human data. Atrial cardiac explants were taken from dogs post-mortem and cultured to isolate adult stem cells. Cells were able to ...

Efficient differentiation of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to a variety of lineages requires step-wise approaches replicating the key commitment stages found during embryonic development. Here we show that expression of PdgfR-α segregates mouse ESC-derived Flk-1 mesoderm into Flk-1(+)PdgfR-α(+) cardiac and Flk-1(+)PdgfR-α(-) hematopoietic subpopulations. By ...

We and others have reported that human NF-κB inhibitor like-1 (NFKBIL1) was a putative susceptible gene for autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA). However, its precise role in the pathogenesis of RA is still largely unknown. In this study, we generated transgenic mice expressing human NFKBIL1 (NFKBIL1-Tg) and examined ...

Postnatal cardiomyocytes undergo terminal differentiation and a restricted number of human cardiomyocytes retain the ability to divide and regenerate in response to ischemic injury. However, whether these neo-cardiomyocytes are derived from endogenous population of resident cardiac stem cells or from the exogenous double assurance population of resident bone marrow-derived stem ...

The production of cardiomyocytes from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC) holds great promise for patient-specific cardiotoxicity drug testing, disease modeling, and cardiac regeneration. However, existing protocols for the differentiation of hiPSC to the cardiac lineage are inefficient and highly variable. We describe a highly efficient system for differentiation of ...

This study investigated the role of regulatory T (T(reg)) cells in patients with new-onset, treatment-naïve ankylosing spondylitis (AS). Levels of CD4(+)CD25(high)CD127(low/-) T(reg) cells in the peripheral blood of 14 AS patients and 18 age-matched healthy volunteers were investigated by flow cytometry and correlations with serum levels of immunoglobulin A (IgA) ...

We investigated the effects of fatigue on NK cell function and lymphocyte subpopulations in nurses performing shift work using a longitudinal design. Fifty-seven female nurses engaged in shift work at a hospital in Japan were selected for our study cohort. The hospital used a counterclockwise rotating three-shift system. Night shifts ...

Hanging drop (HD) culture is used to induce differentiation of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) into other cell types including cardiomyocytes. However, the factors affecting cardiac differentiation of ESCs with this method remain incompletely understood. We have investigated the effects of the starting number of ESCs in embryoid bodies (EBs) and ...

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory disease marked by bone and cartilage destruction. Current biologic therapies are beneficial in only a portion of patients; hence small molecules targeting key pathogenic signaling cascades represent alternative therapeutic strategies. Here we show that c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) 1, but not JNK2, is ...

Th17 cells play crucial roles not only in host defense but also in many human autoimmune diseases and corresponding animal models. Although many of the fundamental principles regarding Th17 biology have been rapidly elucidated in mice, there remain numerous controversies regarding the differentiation, plasticity, and pathogenicity of human Th17 cells. ...

Abstract Background aims. For many years the human heart has been considered a terminally differentiated organ with no regenerative potential after injury. Recent studies, however, have cast doubt on this long-standing dogma. The objective of this study was to investigate the presence of and characterize mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) in ...

Natural Killer (NK) cells are lymphocytes of the innate immune system, originally described by their capacity to control tumour cells and eliminate virus-infected cells. However accumulating evidence suggests that NK cells can interact with various components of the immune system and play a critical role in autoimmune diseases by limiting ...

Doxorubicin (DOX) is an anticancer drug used for the treatment of solid tumors. The ability of DOX to treat cancer is not specific to cancer cells; some of the cells that are normal may also become targets of DOX, thereby altering the normal cellular functions and eventual cell loss. DOX ...

In the mechanism of thymus-induced central tolerance, the transcription factor Aire has been demonstrated to promote the expression of a wide range of peripheral organ-specific antigens (Ags) in the medullary thymic epithelial cells (mTECs), which serve as self-Ags in negative selection. We examined the expression of desmoglein 3 (Dsg3), the ...

Chemokine receptors guide immune cells to specific organs during health and disease. The mRNA content of the chemokine receptors CCR2, CCR4, CCR5, CCR6, CCR7, CCR8, CCR9, CXCR4, CXCR5, and CX3CR1 in CD4(+) cells (T-helper cells) isolated from blood, bursa, cecal tonsil, spleen, and thymus and in CD8(+) cells (T-cytotoxic cells) ...

T lymphocytes depend on the thymic microenvironment for initiation of the T-cell developmental program. As the progenitors in the thymus have lost the capacity to self-renew, this process depends on the constant influx of hematopoietic progenitors that originate in the bone marrow. Nevertheless, thymic emigrants are heterogeneous and retain developmental ...

T cells originate from hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) in the bone marrow but complete their development in the thymus. HSCs give rise to a variety of non-renewing hematopoietic progenitors, among which a rare subset migrates to the thymus via the bloodstream. The earliest T-cell progenitors identified in the thymus are ...

FOXN1 deficiency is a primary immunodeficiency characterized by athymia, alopecia totalis, and nail dystrophy. Two infants with FOXN1 deficiency were transplanted with cultured postnatal thymus tissue. Subject 1 presented with disseminated Bacillus Calmette-Guérin infection and oligoclonal T cells with no naive markers. Subject 2 had respiratory failure, human herpes virus ...

T lymphocytes bearing γ- and δ-chain T-cell receptor heterodimers are named γδ T cells. Interestingly, γδ and αβ T cells share the same progenitors, and they undergo a fate decision in the thymus. Functional differentiation of γδ T cells occurs both inside and outside the thymus. Antigen recognition of γδ ...

Niche availability provided by stromal cells is critical to thymus function. Thymi with diminished function contain fewer stromal cells, whereas thymi with robust function contain proliferating stromal cell populations. Here, we show that the thymus, brain, and testes-associated gene (Tbata; also known as SPATIAL) regulates thymic epithelial cell (TEC) proliferation ...

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating disease, characterized by extremely rapid loss of motor neurons. Our studies over the last decade have established CD4(+) T cells as important players in central nervous system maintenance and repair. Those results, together with recent findings that CD4(+) T cells play a protective ...

Control points of normal thymopoiesis may provide insights into strategies for interrupting cell interactions in thymomas which appear to maintain active T cell production. Thymus production of T cells represents one of two pathways by which peripheral T cell populations are maintained or, if lost, regenerated. The production of T ...

  Asteroid B cells are a component of normal thymus. It is currently unclear whether these cells are identifiable in T cell lymphoblastic leukaemia/lymphoma (T-ALL/LBL) of the thymus. The aim of this study was to identify asteroid B cells both in thymic and extrathymic tissue involved by T-ALL/LBL.   Thymic, ...

The progressive maturation of T cells is accompanied by their migration through the thymus, with each selection stage occurring in distinct microenvironments. Many specialized receptor-ligand pairs have been defined that drive T cell differentiation, but our understanding of the complex relationship between T cells and the thymic stroma is incomplete. ...

The thymus produces several types of functionally distinct T cell subsets. However, at a more fundamental level only two genetically distinct T cell lineages exist: the γδ and αß T cell lineages. Precisely how these two T cell lineages are generated from common thymocyte progenitor cells remains to be fully ...

The thymus develops from the third pharyngeal pouch of the anterior gut and provides the necessary environment for thymopoiesis (the process by which thymocytes differentiate into mature T lymphocytes) and the establishment and maintenance of self-tolerance. It contains thymic epithelial cells (TECs) that form a complex three-dimensional network organized in ...

Thymic epithelial cells (TECs) are present in both cortical and medullary thymic areas, and have crucial roles in functional T-cell development. In this study, we studied the differentiation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to TEC. When iPSC were cultured for 4 days in collagen IV-coated dishes in the presence ...

With advancing age, the thymus undergoes striking fibrotic and fatty changes that culminate in its transformation into adipose tissue. As the thymus involutes, reduction in thymocytes and thymic epithelial cells precede the emergence of mature lipid-laden adipocytes. Dogma dictates that adipocytes are 'passive' cells that occupy non-epithelial thymic space or ...

The development of T cells in the thymus involves several differentiation and proliferation events, during which hematopoietic precursors give rise to T cells ready to respond to antigen stimulation and undergo effector differentiation. This review addresses signaling and transcriptional checkpoints that control the intrathymic journey of T cell precursors. We ...

The thymus forms as an alymphoid thymic primordium with T cell differentiation requiring the seeding of this anlage. This review will focus on the characteristics of the hematopoietic progenitors which colonize the thymus and their subsequent commitment/differentiation, both in mice and men. Within the thymus, the interplay between Notch1 and ...

Thymus organogenesis requires coordinated interactions of multiple cell types, including neural crest (NC) cells, to orchestrate the formation, separation, and subsequent migration of the developing thymus from the third pharyngeal pouch to the thoracic cavity. The molecular mechanisms driving these processes are unclear; however, NC-derived mesenchyme has been shown to ...

The purpose of this 42-day study was to investigate the effects of low selenium (Se) on immune function by determining histopathological changes of thymus, apoptosis of thymic cells, and subpopulation of peripheral blood T cells. One hundred twenty 1-day-old avian broilers were randomly assigned to two groups of 60 each ...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: The thymus provides a unique and essential microenvironment for T-cell precursors to develop into mature functionally competent T lymphocytes. Ageing causes architectural changes in the thymus resulting in a loss of thymic epithelial space required for thymopoiesis - a process known as thymic involution. Additionally, cytoablative regimens ...

The thymus plays a crucial role in the development of T lymphocytes by providing an inductive microenvironment in which committed progenitors undergo proliferation, T-cell receptor gene rearrangements and thymocyte differentiate into mature T cells. The thymus microenvironment forms a complex network of interaction that comprises non lymphoid cells (e.g., thymic ...

Comment on: McCormack MP, et al. Science 2010; 327:879-83.